on edge.

Now Playing: Hurts Like Heaven by Coldplay (cause you, you use your heart as a weapon, and it hurts like heaven)

Twelve years of school has taught me one thing.

I am always super super high at the beginning of the year and virtually suicidal by the end of it.

I lose sight of the bigger picture very easily. When I'm excited I forget the tears, the tantrums, the lows, the depression, the break ups, the fights, cheating and being cheated on. When I'm down I forget the rush, the thrill, all the nerve tingling anticipation, the euphoric highs and chocolate-induced giggle fests.

This is made worse by the fact that a) I'm silly and sixteen, b) emotionally I am a hop and a step away from FUCKING PSYCHO and c) it's the last/most intense/seriously godawful year of school I can remember

I think it's safe to say that everyone's pretty on edge at the moment.

I'm silly and sixteen. In an alternate universe I'd take as much time as I needed this year to just be sixteen - run around in converse sneakers and my ever-expanding collection of sundresses and talk boys and sex and feelings until the cows come home instead of trying to compress my entire emotional spectrum into the odd sleepover and endless facebook chats. In an alternate universe 'talk later' would be replaced with 'fucking WHAT?' and I'd never have to postpone a tantrum so that my poor unsuspecting victim could sod off to sit a spec exam. This is the first year that I've really felt like it is a lost cause trying to reconcile my school career with whatever the fuck is going on with hormones and people and etc. I don't understand either because I'm trying to do both at the same time. I can't shut off my emotions and I sure as hell can't shut off school. If you want to know the true source of my slightly unhealthy obsession with Taylor Swift music is that she conveniently sums up all the shit swirling through my head in neat, easy to swallow, three minute capsules.

Which is a shame, really, because I've always prided myself in being an excellent multitasker and quite good at getting my way.

I'm a romantic, aesthetic sort of person. I value all the things and feelings and people that I have stumbled across and fumbled my way naively through equally with my academic pursuits. Yes, I want to be a writer. I also want to fall in love and get married. I'm trying to work on both dreams at the same time because I value them equally and both have a time limit and both are absolutely killing me with anticipation. I know I will not be happy as an uber sophisticated college professor with more degrees than a thermometer but no baby in the cradle, just as I will not be happy as the uneducated frumpy housewife with a million screaming babies and a cheating asshole for a husband. I know I will not be happy with one or the other - I want it all. I feel like school and life and people are constantly forcing me to choose, and it's a choice I don't have to and don't want to make.

I have to daydream and fantasize just as I need to eat and drink and breathe. I live on the abstract and the bliss of satisfying curiosities and it is impossible to convince people of how real my need for these things are and how utterly bereft I am without them. Anticipation quite literally kills me - I can't stand it. It's exactly the same to me as the low dull ache of hunger and has me constantly on the verge of tears. I keep whinging about how this year has been horrible but it hasn't been horrible so much as horribly intense - the bullying got worse. The love got stronger. The friendships got weirder. The relationships got deeper. The stress went into overdrive and the hormones spiralled totally out of control. This is the year of blood and sweat and tears and I have no energy left for the papercuts and inkstains of final exams. I really should have timed things a bit better. I'm constantly telling my friends to time their 'harbinger of doom' moments around exams so that I don't totally lose my shit. The highs have been wonderful, too. But I've flipped from being totally starved of intensity or anything more emotional or passionate than LOL JKS from being whacked repeatedly over the head and heart with the intensity hammer.

And then, of course, there is the rumour mill. Telling me to ignore the rumour mill is like telling someone to ignore the pride when you're in a lion enclosure at the zoo. Sure, chances are ignoring them will help avoid a panic attack and knowing a lion's temperament they'll probably leave you the fuck alone, but there is nothing sane or wise or normal or feasible about ignoring a giant man-killing animal with teeth the size of carving knives. The rumour mill is like that. Ignoring it might allow me to indulge in the bliss of ignorance and chances are the rumours will just be like insubstantial if slightly annoying pokes but occasionally something big rears its fat ugly head and I thank God that I'm a sensitive emotional little shit because at least I had my eyes open.

I know it looks like I've just totally let myself loose and that I'm being totally open and honest about my emotions - I know I've been chucking tantrums every other day and crying more than a newborn and I've had more sugar-induced highs than is probably healthy. But the truth is I've been keeping a lot of things under wraps, pushed beneath the surface, 'later' and 'now is not the time or place' - and it's slowly driving me insane. I am so on edge I nearly burst into tears after my nail polish chipped. I'm not exactly seeing red, but to paraphrase Taylor Swift there is NOTHING BEIGE about what I'm feeling and doing and seeing right now.

And of course after all this mindfuck of the end of the year is over I'll be pumped for next year. Women never change.